Gateway.radio

It’s rare the introduction to a song can make you see things. When that banshee wail of whatever the fuck that noise is kicks in, all I can see is the most devastating crime scene in my head soaked in blood and only been shown in strobe light effects to the backdrop of that scream. And everything fades to black again as the tension keeps building. A warped and bass is penetrating the body and setting off the heart to mistimed beat. Bass drum kicking in like a Tyson blow to the dome. Just brutality in sonic form. 

You are the poison. The debilitating partner who won’t leave. Nothing is better than watching me fail. It gives you pleasure to see. The fucking passenger who won’t ever leave. Always on the back. Deadly words feeding my own disease to make me spiral harder. How can everything be justified by you? Screamed in defiance. To who? And for what reason? Why deny the morbid pleasure of feeling that decay rotting everything from the inside out. Poisoning every relationship past, present and future. Where memories are broken and dreams are tainted before they get a chance to breathe. 

Was walking around an empty hotel lobby where I work last night, randomly shouting out NO. MERCY. I SHOW NO. MERCY. And could not for the life of me remember where I had heard the song. After much googling and fervent searching inside my own head I found it. And god it was better than I remember. For some reason that discordant and violent guitar just feels like a wave of tranquility washing over me. Just hook that shit straight into my veins and watch me sink through the floor. My inner peace is wave of distortion and bass coming to fuck up my insides with sonic brutality. 

For staccato distortion sledge hammer blows of guitars instantly into her singing my boy hates everybody but me. Oh this journey is gonna be fun. He’s my fully loaded gun, brief silence, bullet casing falls to the ground and bounces a couple of times. You pussies better run. A livewire volatile partner. A Mallory to her Mickey. The wild, dangerous and reckless love of uncontrolled youth left off the chain. Laws, norms and social cues are not even guidelines in this world. They are monuments of oppression to be destroyed at all costs to prove complete and utter devotion. 

Sometimes a song just lands in your lap and you just don’t know what to do with it. Where did you come from? How did you contain so much emotion that caused tears to spring from my eyes? Why are you out here making such soul bearing music to an audience of none? Why was this track hidden behind the first track I heard of a woman who can growl-sing behind a wall of noise? And then this acoustic breakdown of a desperate cry for salvation while standing before the Pearly Gates. Finally feeling at peace with a life once lived only to see the angels looking away in shame as rain comes pouring down in the background. I thought here I could be understood. But no. There was more to this story all along. I just didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. So many mistakes and memories are exposed and I wish they could be gone. I thought I had to break the world before it broke me. 

And her voice just raises and fills all the space as she comes so close to breaking trying to explain and justify her actions. This is who I had to be to survive, you get that right? I had to be this hard to survive. And turned away from the Pearly Gates just to fall back down in the dirt again, where the only choice left is to face yourself. Open every scar and redo the past. Could I have been more kind? The worst part of it is knowing that it was true. Blamed the world, blamed everyone else and never looked in the mirror. Knowing that by hurting first I could never be hurt myself, but at what cost? What did I give up to reach this place? 

The first time I met a woman from South Africa my knees went weak and my stomach started doing backflips. Something about that accent just sent me to pieces. Maybe it’s the old colonizer blood in me from the old days of the British Empire that got woken up inside of me. This is my favourite track by Die Antwoord. Which always raises the next question, how do you deal with artists that become “problematic”. For Die Antwoord’s sake, I am too addicted to their music to stop. Others I have just stopped listening to. Just ok dude, you were fucked up and it wasn’t act. Your catalogue is dead to me. And with Die Antwoord, there is always gonna be that accent that turns me into a human pile of mush filled with adoration. So kinda trapped by my own body's reactions to the way the English language is spoken here.    

And what can I say about the video? I love white trash. I love seeing how we are all trash whether we started on the council estates of England, the hollers on the poorest sides of the  Appalachian mountains, or the white slums of Cape Town. Baby’s On Fire as a track though. It is brutally heavy techno with beats so phat you can’t stop your head from bouncing along. When Yolander sings, her accent is thick; it adds an extra musical rhythm to her singing. I find so many times I am not listening to a word she is singing and just treating her lyrical spitting as another instrument to find a rhythm to bounce along to. 

A man kicked down my wall today. Stood in the rubble of my broken living room looking at me vaping on the sofa in just my boxers trying desperately not to melt away in the heat of this cursed summer. And he said why did you stop writing? What caused you to walk away from all of this that was bringing you so much joy? And as I continued to melt into an ever increasing puddle of my own sweat I said “Iunno. Stuff.” Puff of the vape and staring at this man going, I may need to put pen to paper to get rid of this guy. And remove the friction of sitting down at the screen and typing nonsense to the weird that soothes the soul.  

So with a gentle stammered introduction of mm-ma-mum-ma-madness before the vocals come in and suddenly that voice just eases all tensions past and present. This is home. This is where I belong. Being transported to a heart wrenching tale of loss, learned hopelessness and despair at the madness of trying to keep a relationship going despite there being more red flags than a carnival. Or am I hearing one side of the story and one guy has a bigger platform to tell his side? I guess we can never know for sure. But I love being here. I love this journey he has invited me on. Where madness and musical composition play with each other to say you can never know the whole truth. But dig the vibes huh? 

This came out in the 90’s and I don’t know if I remember this track coming out or if it is memory I have created later on to suit my own needs. I like to think I got to experience to the 90’s but truth is I didn’t hit my teenage years and start developing an interest for music until 1996. So music before then what was it? Background noise? Did I really get to experience the 90s at all? The idea of experiencing their 20s during the 90s is I am sure an idea that many people like to idolise, pedestalise and fantasise about. A decade without smart phones, music that is still played in the clubs today and a sense of hope that I myself felt vanish after 9/11. Just a moment of saying to myself, well, fuck. Things ain’t gonna be the same and probably not for the better either. And well, broadly gesturing at everything, you see my train of thought in action.

But what if I had gotten the 90s? I would not have gotten the 00s. The awkward decade that no one really knows what to call. The Noughties? Sounds ridiculous. But got it was some good music. Or was it really? Is it rose tinted glasses saying, the music that existed in my 20s was the best ever written and everything since has been garbage, soulless trash. And if I had had the 90s now I would be in my 50s now. Looking at retirement getting ever closer as retirement funds disappear into the ether of whatever the fuck is going on out there. From trusting what my own eyes to see, to AI slop being everywhere and not having been trained at a young enough age to distinguish between reality and slop. What a nightmare. The world I loved, replaced by a constant online bombardment of entities fighting for my attention inside a black mirrored rectangle of ever worsening daily doomscrolling post 1990s world in the worse possible way.

Weaponised apathy finally finding a release with a track that was a little before my time yet remains timeless. Just an anthem of hope wrapped in cynicism. The person who listened to this when it mattered most still had hope for the future and believed that the world was a conquerable place just waiting for him to step up to the plate. The man listening today is going where did that hope go? What happened? When did it all fade, crumble and turn to dust? Why did time get so fast? Why are the memories here over 20 years old?

With a raw and vulnerable guitar welcoming us in. Come. Listen. I am still living with your ghost. Which meant nothing to me as a care free teenager. Is crippling to me as an adult with bills to pay and a life that keeps putting up new roadblocks every time we try to change direction. We can live beside the ocean, leave it far behind. Swim out past the breakers, watch the world die. You and me vs the world. In a different life where every single thing was completely different. Perhaps. I am still dreaming of your face snarled out into existence as the guitar riff gets heavier and drums more poundy. We really thought it could be more than this at some point? Right?

Manic Street Preachers - 1998

I woke up this morning from a dream where If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next had been playing on a radio in a sunlit room in a dream. So naturally, I sat down with my morning coffee and just had to listen to the track on the album This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Which said it had the release date August 01, 1994. Which confused me. Cause I remembered listening to this album in school with my mates and no way was I 11 at the time. I was in upper school. So a quick trip to Wikipedia told me this album 14 September, 1998. That’s more like it yeah. I was 15 at the time this came out. A quick chat with the AI bot on the support page of Tidal let them know the correct information and the bot told me it would put the album under review. Spent a few seconds there thinking all my memories were false.

You Stole the Sun from My Heart is the next track on the album after If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next. A stark warning about the need to start shooting fascists pretty fucking soon and acceptance of their place in this world is all downhill from here onward. If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next. Huh. But then You Stole the Sun from My Heart came on and I just remembered what a glorious track this. From it’s staccato drums to it’s huge, era defined, Brit Rock guitars. This song doesn’t as much take me back as it reminds me that love is just fucking weird and I still don’t get it now. You have broken through my armour and I don’t have an answer. I love you all the same. I’m lost among the undergrowth, so much so I woke up. I love you all the same. You stole the sun from my heart.

What’s your comfort food? When everything is weighing you down and you just need a pick me up? For me it’s to go through the Clutch back catalogue. Guitars that just smash your face off, an easy to nod along to blues rhythm and a singer who spouts tales of wonders. In the shadow of Cerebus her spirit will reside. She dances on black sand in the night, In a linen dress. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It means everything to me. Just larger than life riffs being pounded into my skull at breakneck speed while a Hammond organ screeches in the background adding more layers to the cacophony of the trial of La curandera. It’s a small dose of ridiculous dressed in seriousness but with a wink in its eye and jaunt in its step.

How To Destroy Angels- 2010

Two years had passed since the final farewell album from Nine Inch Nails had been released for free on their website as a thank you to the fans. Two years and me wondering, well, now what do I do? And then A Drowning got released. The first track I heard from the upcoming album How To Destroy Angels by, How To Destroy Angels. And everything felt right with the world again. Trent was making music and his wife was singing some of the most haunting vocals wrapped in that distinctive multi-layered textured sound I had had around me since my first days of dipping my toes into music loving serious. We were back. And with a track to make us feel that there never could be a purpose to anything again, but please. Just help. If you can.

Dead Sara - 2015

Muffled like I’m listening underwater. Thoughts that shouldn’t take root but sit there anyway. Just doing our best to drown them but they scream back from underwater. Do you ever feel like dyin’, she screams at you. I remember talking to a therapist once and them asking if there are suicidal thoughts and I said oh just the usual amount you know. 3 or 4 times a week. She said no. The correct amount is zero. What? That doesn’t seem right. So some people go through their whole lives without that. Do what we gotta do to make it through is the last line screamed from underwater before the music moves into the room with us. A brief moment where we just stand tall and say, it is what it is, but we keep on going.

For such a taboo subject, erased by algorithms so we can no longer have a public discourse on the subject matter, the music is incredibly upbeat once it is allowed to breathe and is acknowledged. As with most dark and anti-marketing subjects, once the light is shone on them they become less taboo. So when the stadium chorus comes around you found yourself scream singing along with the chorus yelling at the top of your lungs, We’re suicidal! And finding the entire thing so cathartic.

Upon hearing this cover, I knew this would forever be the definitive version. An old friend up in Norrland showed me this and it was love at first sight. There could never, ever be another version and the original will always feel half-assed in comparison to this. Just Haynes up there on that stage. A single acoustic guitar carrying the weight of all the regrets felt and still to come. And a voice that has just had too much pain for one lifetime.

One for me will always be that dark night of the soul between two lovers. That talk. The one you been putting off and delaying for so long. But now it has to come to a head. This has to get out in the open. Those feelings you had for so long weighing down your guts and making everything so heavy. But how do you express them? The only emotion you ever really understood is anger. And in turn became the only way you ever knew how to express emotion. And this person in front of you is asking you to express yourself with a vocabulary you never learned.

Rebekka Karijord- 2009

A haunting piano to lull us in, and before we can even find our footing she starts singing. She sings with an exhaustion that can only come from losing patience with yourself. Every single day. I don’t know where this fear came from. This fear of failing, fear of letting myself and everyone down. It’s like knives straight through the ego and the heart just sinks inside my chest hearing this. A heart wrenching call for help where the only problem is the noise inside your own head and the fear that holds you still. Just forcing you to listen to every single part of you that wants you to fail and made manifest in song.

This fear is growing deep into my soul. Make me all paralyzed and cold she sings and I just feel my head hang even heavier. When did this fear start dictating all my decisions? Why did she have to put into words the weight that’s been holding me down for longer than I can remember? Cause if I don’t follow my heart this time, I’m gonna forget what this life is all about. What does the heart even want when it’s crushed daily inside a machine that demands time for survival? Where does the heart turn when it is too heavy? There is sadness so deep inside this song that even the resolution feels too monolithic to contemplate.

Nothing hits. All the words are fake extensions of an ego that can’t rest. Time to exorcise all that noise with Silence. And it has to be just the mix. All other mixes are wrong. This is my home. This is where I stood and reached for the lasers. This is comfort in a bass line that rearranges the insides to say stay in this moment. Right here. Right now. With me. This is the only place you need to be. Feel it flow through you. Let the music build, let it take you places beyond where the ego can reach. Just close your eyes. Oh. My. God. That voice. I just need to close my eyes, listen and nothing else can exist right now. The song gets busy but I can always hold onto that rumbling rolling bass and Sarah’s voice A guide during this moment of silence inside my head where I can just listen.

And I wanted to believe that I’d get caught up, when the rage in me subsides. The drums fade, the synth of the angels builds up and Sarah just unleashes a powerful and gentle pummeling of how much the silence means when all the anger subsides. There is a freedom that comes from standing in the silence and just letting it crash over. In this white wave of serenity, I am free. I have seen you. Inside this white wave and you are silent. You are with me. And the silence has to end to make way for the thumping tempo of clarity given and of journeys beginning from this place of peace.

In celebration of the UK’s last place in the Eurovision we gonna look at some other music by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, cause in all honesty this guy is fantastic. Be it making the nightmare fuel that is a Furby organ to producing absolute bangers like this track to constructing his own weird and whacky instruments. Cause what else is a bonkers sound engineer to do? Night or Day starts with guitars harking back to the height of Brit pop before a fat filthy synth comes with backing vocals created by himself on a reverb loop. I know I getting too technical here and just splooging over the guy but my god this mans creativity is without borders and I am in awe just to sit in the shade of what he makes. Marvel at the construction of it all and giggle with excitement of a schoolboy putting mentos into a coca-cola bottle for the first time.

The song is a declaration of rapture. I have built all my machines, taken all of my pills and now there is nothing left to do. I need to run away from here, tasting absolutely no fear. Just keep running until there ain’t no night or day. No say, no space, no shame. Just a blending of all the hours so neither night or day exists. The demons that come at nighttime are now creative muses. The lethargy of sunlight and days spent waiting for the night to roll around to get back to the real work. I’ve seen the fractures, call them what you will. There’s nothing to redeem. A journey beyond the accepted walls we put around ourselves just to be drowned in the rapture of the synth gods.

Happy birthday Trent. How do you pick a favourite from such a vast catalogue where brilliance is facing you at every turn? How about the double album I brought on release day, skipped working to stay at home and listen to all day long and only really grew to fall for this track just a year ago? Starting in a deep dark synth hole of claustrophobic where sorrow highlights the oppression. Just surrounded by the depths of every mistake ever made and being told, listen. This is what every regret you ever made sounds like. Is there hope for me? All the spoils of a wasted life. All of this for you. Can it ever mean a thing? Whispers so distant just telling you repeatedly, you made all the wrong choices. She is gone. You are gone. It’s all gone. Forever. There is no coming back from this. The currents are pulling you away from every ambition you ever held. 

And a sudden violent outburst. And I descend from grace. In arms of undertow. I will take my place. In the Great Below. This is my home now. Sucked away and dragged out into a vast expanse of nothing but void. There is nothing here. It is the Great Below. Where nothing can exist and nothing can hurt me anymore. But I can still feel you. Even so far away. You never left entirely. You still live under this skin. And no matter how far the current pulls me into the void. You will always be there. Buried underneath everything I have created and abandoned and destroyed. An echo of a memory of a time when it all meant something. 

A huge part of me is convinced that 1994 was the greatest year for music. Both Blur and Oasis debuted here. Nirvana had just given us In Utero and Courtney Love’s desperate plea in the album Live Through This, was haunting. I feel such a desperate stay-with-me-sadness echoing throughout that whole album. And then there is Live - Throwing Copper. Right at the tail end of grunge but still walking their own path completely. I Alone is where we land today to glimpse back at this era. A song that starts so gentle and caring and fills me with a dread that lives on today. 

Promises of companionship and caring in the start of a relationship. I will be there for you, I will care for you, I will offer the world according to where I am standing and you will be grateful to receive it. But then the stadium sized chorus kicks in with cries of I alone love you, I alone tempt you, I alone love you. I am the only one you can turn to for love. There is no one else but me, myself and I. And I am pretty certain that is not the message being portrayed in the world of 1994. But in a way, surely he knows? He knows this is the repetitive sonic battery into submission and isolation. It’s all I can hear myself and I am pretty certain just by saying this, I have ruined this song for someone.